Noah Gragson was at the end of his tether with Ross Chastain.
Gragson came over to the Trackhouse Driver at the end of the Advent Health 400 at Kansas Speedway to discuss the way he’s been raced, and the discussion got heated. Gragson pushed Chastain before Ross threw the first punch, with both swiftly separated at that point.
Gragson hit the wall in Turn 4 after being crowded up by Chastain and ended up spinning in Turn 2 a few laps later.
To Gragson, this was a continuation of the way Chastain has raced him two races back at Talladega. At the superspeedway, Chastain was bump-drafting Gragson before jumping low and going for an aggressive move up the middle after Noah drifted high. The ensuing wreck collected much of the field.
“Just got fenced by the 1 [of Chastain],” Gragson summed up the wreck. “He took care of us at Talladega – we’re Chevrolet teammates and he didn’t work with us there – and fenced us here, and I’m just over it.”
“When you got guys like Chase Elliott, other guys telling you to go beat his ass…” Gragson trailed off. “Nobody else has the balls to at least confront him, you know, just grab him and do something… he’s just going to keep doing it, and I’m over it. It’s the second time.”
“I have respect for Justin Marks and the rest of the Trackhouse team and that’s why I’m not wrecking them on the racetrack, but I’m ready to fight him, you know?” he added. “I didn’t even get a shot in because the security guards got in the middle of it, but nobody confronts the guy, he just keeps doing it, and I’m sick and tired of it.”
As for Chastain, he ended up finishing fifth. He acknowledged that he and Gragson are both aggressive drivers on the racetrack, and admitted that he pushed up in the initial contact.
“I got tight off of [Turn] 4 for sure,” he acknowledged. “Noah and I have a very similar attitude on the racetrack, and we train together, we prepare together, we know every little bit about each other.”
“Yeah, I definitely crowded him up off of [Turn] 4, and he took a swipe out of us in [Turn] 3, then came down, grabbed ahold of me… a very big man once told me that we have a no push policy here at Trackhouse, so…” he trailed off.
“Heck of a fight from this group,” Chastain summed up his day.
Chastain wasn’t out of trouble the rest of the race either. Christopher Bell spun after contact with him, but this time it was Bell who came up the track into Chastain. Bell, who was having a strong top-five day, took the blame for that one, too.
“I think I made a mistake trying to get off of turn two and got into the 1 [of Chastain] and spun out,” he said. “Disappointing day. I felt like our SiriusXM Camry was everything I needed to compete for a good finish at least and I’m out of the race.”
Chastain also earned a strongly-worded message over the radio from Kyle Busch, who added that he hit him on the backstretch as a warning. Busch said after the race that he wasn’t specifically angry with Chastain, but just the aero-heavy style of racing the Next Gen car produces.
“It wasn’t just him, it was a lot of guys… it’s just a product of the car, you just stall when you get there and you can’t pass. It’s just terrible racing,” Busch told the media outside the infield care center.
Regardless, Chastain isn’t making any new friends after criticism for wrecking Brennan Poole into Kyle Larson at Dover last week.
Here's what happened on pit road between @NoahGragson and @RossChastain. pic.twitter.com/MMcOLASlgq
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) May 7, 2023
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